


Diamonds on Her Wrist

by orphan_account



Category: Serial Killer - Lana Del Rey (Song)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Crueltide, F/F, Hollywood, Hollywood Starlets, Implied Cannibalism, Misses Clause Challenge, Monsters, Murder, Seduction, Serial Killers, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-19
Updated: 2015-11-19
Packaged: 2018-05-02 09:32:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5243294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The woman sitting at the bar had blonde hair flowing down her back, and a certain old style charm that put him in mind of one of those old Hollywood starlets. The classic ones, the ones his mother had used to watch on a seemingly endless loop with her hands clasped in front of her and a dreamy look in her eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Diamonds on Her Wrist

The woman sitting at the bar had blonde hair flowing down her back, and a certain old style charm that put him in mind of one of those old Hollywood starlets. The classic ones, the ones his mother had used to watch on a seemingly endless loop with her hands clasped in front of her and a dreamy look in her eyes.

Perhaps that observation as what finally got him over his hesitation, had him sidling up alongside the beauty and offering her an ever so timid smile, "hi, I'm Ryan."

In all the time he'd been watching her, in all the time he'd been breathlessly admiring her blood red lips and grey-blue eyes, the woman hadn't moved. But now she did, smiled a sultry smile and slowly turned her lovely head to look at him, "Marilyn. Charmed, I'm sure."

"Look," he said hurriedly, slightly nervous despite the fact that she didn't at all seem mocking - seemed soft and charming instead, like she knew all of his problems and understood them intimately, "I don't usually do this, have never actually done this before really, but- But I'm in town for one night, and I just wanted to tell you that you have the most beautiful eyes that I've ever seen."

"Oh," the woman purred, and gave him the sweetest smile that he'd ever seen, "don't worry, I get that a _lot_."

 

\--

 

_She came to Hollywood when she was nineteen, in the Fifties where all the stars were glamorous and nobody paid quite as much attention to the darkness waiting underneath. She wanted to be an actress, a star of the silver screen like Marilyn Monroe with her timeless smile or Rita Hayworth with her glorious hair. She was going to make it, she was going to be beloved._

_It was going to be an escape, in a way. Her parents weren't terrible people, they didn't scream at her or strike her, but they also didn't particularly care. She could've done anything, and they wouldn't have said a word in response. She wanted people to pay attention to her. She wanted to be like a star, with everybody rotating in her orbit like she was the best thing that had ever happened in their meaningless little lies._

_...It was not an escape._

_Hollywood made a good show of caring at first, all shining lights and charming brightness, but it was a lie. Everything was hollow, from the spaces behind the sets to the bright smiles fixed upon everybody's faces. You could succeed, yes, but flying would be easier. It was all paint over old tin, emptiness disguised with carefully lipsticked grins._

_She tried, of course, she ran as fast as she could and smiled brighter than anybody around her. But in the end, as ever, it seemed worth nothing. She ended up working in a tiny hole in the wall, smiling brightly as the men drooled over her curves and the women with them stared hopelessly out into the emptiness of the night. She ended up close to not caring herself, just another failed story desperately trying to wring blood from a brightly shining stone._

_And then she met Milena._

 

\--

 

They talked late into the night, and for the first time he thought he understood what love at first sight meant. The woman - Marilyn - got more beautiful with every drink, blonde hair shimmering and red lips curving. They liked all the same movies, all the same books. She laughed at his every joke, and when she casually laid her hand upon his arm he thinks that his chest may compress from the very weight of wanting.

He only noticed how long they'd been there when he looked up to find the bar almost empty. And then the crushing sense of his disappointment almost knocked him to the floor, "I... I should get going."

"Aw," Marilyn said, and pouted her red lips absolutely perfectly - like Rita Hayworth in Gilda, the most beautiful thing that he'd ever seen up until he walked into the bar tonight, "but we were just getting started, and I was having _so_ much fun."

"I-I'm sorry," he stuttered, caught in her beauty like a deer in the headlights, "I'm only in town for a day, for a funeral you see, and I have to get up early to get the plane back tomorrow and- and-"

Marilyn regarded him for a long second, and then slowly smiled again. Like a tigress, so beautiful that he half felt like weeping at the sight of it, "oh, my dear Ryan, I _think_ I may just have a solution to both of our dilemmas. Are you staying with anybody?"

He stared at her for a long moment. Breathless, willing to jump off a cliff if she just gave the word, "I- no. There's just me, and my cold hotel room."

"Excellent," Marilyn purred, and reached out to take his hand again - her nails as red as her lips, her skin as cold as ice, "come home with me, and you won't have to worry about that cold ever again."

 

\--

 

_Milena had curly black hair piled high on top of her head and eyes grey as the fog. She spoke slowly, deliberately with just the faintest trace of an accent and when she smiled it was both beautiful and dangerous. She turned up at the hole in the wall at least once a week, and always took a helplessly adoring male with her when she left._

_She always returned. The males, however, never did._

_She was not a shy girl, shy girls generally didn't come to Hollywood to whore themselves to the silver screen, but she still hesitated for over a month before she allowed herself to interact. Allowed herself to step forward, before a slavering worshiper could throw himself into her space, and clear her throat._

_"Hi, can I get you anything?"_

_Milena looked at her for a long moment, considering, and then smiled one of her slow smiles. Up close, it was even more intoxicating, "nothing for the moment, thank you. Sit down."_

_It was like looking at a tiger, up close. Beautiful, but... Terrifying. She could appreciate the show, the beautiful presentation and the molten eyes, but somehow she couldn't quite shake the feeling that she was just a meal. That at any moment the amusement could run out, and she could find herself bleeding out all over the floor._

_She sat down anyway, threw her ash blonde hair over her shoulder. She kept trying for bombshell blonde, but dye was expensive and she couldn't stave off the hunger for that long._

_"I'm Milena," Milena said, looking oddly impressed at her daring. She'd never seen her looking anything more than laconic before, it was a fascinating sight, "and you are?"_

_"Mary," she blurted, and then bit her tongue. Counted to ten in her head, just as she'd been practicing for the last year when standing in line just to be viewed by men who saw her as little better than cattle, before she carried on, "I mean, Marilyn. I'm a waitress here."_

_"I know, I've seen you around. You look remarkably good in an apron," Milena paused for a long few seconds, shot her an amused glance. Dangerous, again, but so intoxicating that it was very hard to resist, "so, Mary, why did you decide to approach me tonight?"_

_"Marilyn," She resisted anyway, on principle. She had spent so much of her life resisting, so long refusing to relent, that it was something close to habit, "Mary... Is my old name, I changed it years ago. And you come here every single week."_

_Milena's eyes widened for a moment. Milena, yet again, looked almost impressed at her daring._

_"...Any reason why?"_

_"One or two," Milena purred lowly. And, for the first time, gave her a genuine smile. Just as terrifying as her glamorous grins, but not trying to hide behind a thin veneer of humanity, "possibly more, after tonight. What time do you get off?"_

 

\--

 

They walked back to her flat through the cold night. And he couldn't recall a word of the conversation they had, but he was sure it was something spectacular. Something that explored his deepest fears, his most sincere hopes. Something that made him feel like he finally _mattered_. He'd spent so much of his life feeling bitter and twisted and meaningless, it was a thrill to finally look into Marilyn's misty grey eyes and feel like his life was actually worth a damn.

They walked for hours, he wasn't sure for exactly how long due to the intoxication of her presence, and when they finally slowed to a halt he didn't recognize where they were. That wasn't too much of a surprise, though. This was a big and unfeeling town, it didn't make itself very welcoming to strangers.

Marilyn, however, _Marilyn_...

Had stilled in front of an old looking building, built in the fifties at the latest. She was staring at him, with an odd smirk curving her blood red lips. Her eyes glowed almost silver, in the lowly buzzing electric street lights, and her hand was as cold as ice in his.

For the first time, the first time in all that magical night, a brief stir of misgiving started in his stomach. A slightly muffled scream of terror, that sent him wincing in the face of it, "I..."

Marilyn's eyes flashed briefly, as if in impatience, but it was the thought of a moment and then gone. Before he knew it she was stepping close into his space again, batting her eyelids up at him with all the innocence of an ingénue, "can I tell you something silly, Ryan?"

"Anything," he whispered, caught again. The screaming in his gut faded, his logical mind scoldingly took over again.

"I came out to the bar tonight thinking that maybe, just maybe, I'd finally find my true love," she smiled up at him, and her smile was everything he had ever wanted - a warm flood of acceptance, smoothing all petty things away, "and I think that it might be you."

"Oh," he said, breathlessly, "Marilyn..."

" _Ryan_..."

When she led him into the blackness of the building, smiling all the way, he didn't resist. He didn't, in fact, even look back as the outside world slowly disappeared behind him.

 

\--

 

_They walked for hours that night, down glitzy boulevards and dark streets and all things in between until even she had no idea where they were. It was quite an achievement, really. In her time in this horrid town she'd thought she'd walked on every inch of sidewalk, trod into every single dark corner in search of fame. It was almost refreshing to find that to be a lie._

_...Refreshing in the same way that a jump off a cliff was refreshing, of course, but she didn't allow that tiny fact to spoil her mood._

_Milena proved quite talkative, away from the dark stage of the hole in the wall. They talked of a thousand subjects, each more interesting than the last. Of fame and longing, determination and spite, the way that fat old men looked at them and the way they both wanted to shred the world and make it into something new. She smiled more often away from the weight of the longing of other people, and laughed too. The smile of a tiger, the laugh of a tiger, but somehow both more enchanting than the false face she had been putting on earlier._

_It was odd, to fall so suddenly and in such a way. But... Not unpleasant._

_"You know," Milena said eventually, in a softly purring voice as they entered one of the newer parts of town - freshly built houses towering silently all around them, "usually, by this point in the night, I would've killed you."_

_She didn't gasp over how the fates of the men that had been taken from the bar, because that would be stupid. She didn't cry over the evil of the act, because she didn't really care. She didn't tremble in terror, because fascination had overtaken it. She only turned her head slowly, and fixed Milena with a fascinated glance, "why haven't you?"_

_"You... Interest me," Milena said, and fixed her with a smile that was savage and free. The bared teeth of a predator, that had finally met its match, "tell me, Marilyn. How do you feel about eternal life?"_

 

\--

 

The apartment was dark. Not dark in a natural way, just waiting for a light to be switched on, but dark in a... Creeping way. Like the shadows were lurking close, just waiting to slide up and slit his throat. He froze, the moment he entered. Could somehow only bring himself to unfreeze when Marilyn uttered a low laugh behind him, locked the door with a sharp _click_.

"This..." He wavered, uncertain, and then forced the resurgence of terror down as Marilyn circled into his vision - a purring smirk on her face, "I didn't think this part of town had that much light pollution."

"Oh, it doesn't," Marilyn chuckled, and tilted her head - her grey eyes standing out like torches in the darkness of the room, "but we wanted to be safe. You can never take too many precautions, after all."

There was an unpleasant smell, heavy and meaty like old blood. He noticed, far too late, that there was dark card plastered over the windows - blocking out all the light beyond a terrifying sliver that slanted coldly over Marilyn's beautiful face "...W-we?"

Marilyn smiled. And she was beautiful, yes, but beautiful in the way that a hunter is beautiful. Gorgeous and flowing, until suddenly it noticed you and the only thing left was the sharp baring of teeth.

" _We_ ," and another purring voice interrupted, the soft tread of footsteps announcing another figure who sounded just like the vampires in the movies his father had forced him to watch as a kid, "are very cautious creatures. You learn to be so, in this kind of world. We can't both go out hunting at once, for instance."

"It would be foolish," Marilyn offered, a slightly more tender smile upon her face. And, now that he saw it, he realized that everything she had given him had been set dressing - smoke and mirrors designed to lure in the stupid, "who would guard the apartment, after all?"

"Who would get things _ready_?"

"Indeed, my dear Milena."

"P-Please," he stuttered, bringing up his hands defensively. A desperate gesture, a pointless one by the light in Marilyn's eyes - the silver light, the hungry one that could rip a person apart and still devour a whole crowd after, "don't hurt me, whatever you are. I'm a good man, I don't deserve-"

"Nobody does," Marilyn purred. And her eyes were silver as the moon, and her fangs stood out long in her face as she drifted forwards with her smoky wife at her side, "but that never really changes anything, in the end."


End file.
